by Brian Hughes
The milk float stopped with an electronic whine, Barley lifting his head from the rusted controls and staring blankly at the shaggy toe blocking his progress.
He climbed down, removed his grimy cap and scratched his grimy head.
He climbed back up, reversed slowly and then hurtled forwards at about four miles an hour. It was difficult to say exactly what his strategy was, whether he wanted to mount the foot and off-road over the gigantic knuckle or whether he simply wanted to dislodge it from the street.
Whatever the case, the result was an unmitigated disaster. Seconds later a colossal palm reached down and plucked the milk float from its spreading pool of broken eggs. Its wheels span, the farmer still gripping the mock-leopard-skin steering wheel for dear life.
Giles watched as Greyminster receded, being replaced by the opaque sheen of milky clouds. When at last he turned, he found himself staring into the bloodshot eyes of a slavering gorilla that looked hungry enough to eat a full English breakfast.
“Right!” Sergeant Partridge dropped the smouldering cigarette butt, screwed it into the ground with the heel of his boot and slapped his large, leather-clad hands together. The mangled remains of the milk float rained down around him. “Let’s get this sorted!”
Jack Partridge was not a man to shirk responsibility. In all of his years on the force he had put up with a great many situations where it would have been easier to turn a blind eye. Anxious old biddies pouring cups of tea down his throat, that sort of thing. Sometimes they’d even forget the custard creams. Somebody had to take charge. He owed it to Greyminster, the town that had kept him employed for so many years. He owed it to Mr. Thompson, the Lord Mayor, and Mr. Wilkes the street cleaner. But most of all, he owed it to himself. If he buckled now he’d never be able to live the repercussions down.
He straightened himself determinedly.
“Right! Metal Mickey!”
Hogan glowered angrily in the Jack’s direction. “Time for action! No arguments now...”
The authority in Jack’s voice brought the words leaving Hogan’s lips to a standstill. Jack took a definite stride towards him.
“You’ve brought this on yourself! Least y’ can do is give us an ’and!” He took his shoulder in one square palm and made Hogan study the destruction behind him. “’Ave a go at diggin’ the old folk out of the cellar! Cecilia!”
His giant frame swung back round to where Cissy Doyle was engaged in battle with her mother’s walking stick.
“Try sortin’ this lot out!” Her gaze followed his finger, coming to rest on the mound of rubble. “I’ve got a plan! If we weaken the structure of the floorboards…”
Jack cogitated.
“Which shouldn’t take a lot o’ doin’ under the circumstances,” he continued. “And cover the ’ole lot with a few flimsy bits of wood. Then...”
Cissy brightened slightly.
“We’ve got a trap?” she said excitedly. “Amanda Duck falls down the cellar and...and...”
“And…she’s fallen down the cellar.” Jack knew it wasn’t a terrible good plan. Most workable plans have an ‘AND THEN’ to round them off. But it was a plan of sorts and it had to better than just sitting around with his head up his arse.
“Don’t pay no attention to ’im, Cecilia! ’Ee’s just delayin’ the inevitable!”
“Constable Jaye!” Jack swung his portentous frame around once more.
“Sarge?”
“Arrest that old woman.”
Mrs. Doyle’s gummy mouth plunged open.
“Prop ’er up against the nearest wall and shoot her!”
“Yes Sarge. By the way, Sarge. It’s on the move again. Heading for Applegate by the looks of it.”
The creature shifted its tremendous feet carefully between the narrow streets before swinging itself out across the taciturn town.
Jack brought his hands together in a smear of dust. Now something was getting done. Time to play the Ace he’d kept hidden up his sleeve.
Which was difficult. Because the Ace was more of a Joker. But times were desperate and perhaps the situation would reveal his worthless understudy’s true colours. He tugged the walkie-talkie from his pocket and forced down the button.
“Parkins?”
A few moments of whispering static.
“PARKINS!!!!!!”
The volume was so loud that all the industrious biddies working on the devastated remnants of Patternoster Row looked up from their occupations. After a few moments more the receiver clicked into life.
“Constable Parkins here. Sorry Sarge...I was...thinking.” The voice stopped dead whilst the constable thought about his future with the force. “Very deeply, Sarge.”
Jack muttered gruffly beneath his breath. “Let go of the button Parkins, y’ useless great wa...”
The line reopened with a click and the return of the static drowned out the peaceful sounds of Sword Street. Jack breathed a grateful sigh.
“Right, now Parkins. I don’t want to alarm y’ lad but...” He really didn’t want to cause alarm. Parkins wouldn’t be much use for what he had in mind if the daft bugger was running around shrieking wildly. “’Ave a gander around son and tell me what y’ can see...”
Parkins’ voice broke through the ether once more, calmly nonchalant. “Nothing, Sarge. Just the houses! And Mrs. Jones looking out of the window. And...a gorilla’s toe.”
There was a lengthy pause.
“A very, very large gorilla’s toe...AAAAAAAAAARGH!”
Giles Barley swung precariously from the mammoth digit, reluctant to meet the same fate as his delivery vehicle. He’d already abandoned his cap to a playful squall that had flung it onto the spire of St. Oliver’s. Now he was in danger of losing his grip.
He’d suspected that the fur would be coarse enough to hang onto. But it had turned out that the hairs were just replicas. It was almost as though the ape hadn’t understood what was required of a genuine coat.
He wrapped his legs around the gargantuan knuckle, stupidly blinking into the tiny maze of avenues below. From up here the landscape resembled an Ordinance Survey map without the scribbles on the roads that other people had told him were their names. Or rings round the hills. Or large red shaded areas coloured with felt tip to represent his own land and any ramblers had better bugger off sharpish before he got his gun out and shot ’em.
The finger flicked as Amanda Duck, irritated by his sharp grasp, attempted to dislodge him by shaking her hands. Giles gripped on tighter, smashing around several hundred feet above the rooftops like a tiny rag doll in a very strong wind.
For a moment he appeared to be successfully mounting the thumb. Just for a moment. Then he dropped, plummeting over and over, his arms outstretched as he hurtled towards the basin of the town.
The backyard at number eight South Albert Road. Long time residence of Mr. Reginald Dewhurst. A yard enshrouded by the quiet thoughtfulness of night.
With a deafening crash two dustbins transformed into woks as Giles Barley landed on them. The crash was accompanied by a hideous spiralling scream. For several seconds there was no further noise other than the grind, grind, grind of a lid rolling groggily around in a circle.
The back door creaked open onto a yellow floodlit kitchen and a silhouette filled the gap. “’Oo’s that?” No reply. Just the rustle of several old Lancashire hotpot tins being disturbed from the pile. A low, menacing ‘clack’ signified that Mr. Dewhurst had slammed shut his double-barrelled shotgun.
“’Av gorra a gun,” he continued. “An’ am norrafreed t’ use it neither!”
The ribbon of light from the doorway landed on the body of the blinking farmer. He shielded his eyes. The trigger ground back with the lightest of touches.
“It’s yoo, is it? Y’ theivin’ bastard!” Mr. Dewhurst’s eyes narrowed into strips of tautly stretched muscle. “Bloody farmer! GO ON! Get off my land before Ar sets tha dog on y’!”
Three-Nine-Five almost careered past the end of Patternoster Row. It
was difficult to believe that what had been described as ‘a residential area’ could be so crudely constructed. It resembled little more than a festering mound of twisted wires, bent infrastructure and household utensils. Whatever, Earther’s no doubt had their own idea of ‘residential’ and his wasn’t the place to criticise the ways of others. Especially those as gave him Hob Nobs.
If it hadn’t been for the homing device he’d been using in his original pursuit of Hogan he might never have stopped and faced the alley at all.
Three-Nine-Five was closely followed, although not terribly close it must be said, by a white and red mound of rapidly breathing female. She’d abandoned one of her slippers to the gutter. Now Allison’s broad freckled foot padded around the corner with a sort of thud, slap, thud, slap sound.
Cissy was bent over double removing the rubble from the pit. Suddenly she found herself tumbling forwards as the robot misjudged his speed and collided with her bottom. She toppled headfirst into a collection of torn drapes, dragging her complaining mother with her.
“He needs to talk!” shouted Allison, pulling up short, her dressing gown continuing after she’d stopped. One corner brought Cissy a nasty slap around the eye. “There’s something obviously very urgent that Mr. Robot wants to discuss with you!”
Cissy blinked, her eye watering, and stared upwards in silence.
“Chichaahchacchacchac!”
“Very good!” Cautiously rising, the toad-eyed teenager brushed down her clothes and cocked her head on one side. “Thank you. Now, if that’s that, I’ve got to get on! Before Greyminster becomes a boulder of baboon shit! If you’ll excuse me?”
With that she turned her back on them and bent over to continue her work. Seconds later she heard Hogan’s voice joining in with the guard’s conversation.
Hogan’s expression dropped, about as low as it could without sliding off his face altogether. He brought his hand up to his chin and scratched the bristles. Then he spoke with a soft cricket-like noise. Three-Nine-Five’s whole body was animated, limbs excessively gesturing, eyes blinking on and off with the intermittence of Christmas tree lights.
At length Hogan stuffed his hands into his pockets and snorted. Then he turned to where Jack Partridge was talking to his radio. In the distance Amanda Duck was tearing the already loose copper dome from the town hall. Presumably it reminded her of a giant mint bun. Somewhere in that vicinity Constable Parkins was now at work. “Right Parkins. Now lad, I want y’ to...”
Jack felt a hand on his shoulder. It sent a shiver down his spine. He frowned and was confronted by Hogan’s miserable features.
“You might as well forget that!” There was something about his tone that told Jack the news wasn’t going to be good. “That bloody monkey’s the least of our problems now, I’m afraid!”
Chapter Sixteen: The Sergeant’s Solution
With a crunch the dome that had already been weakened by the Columbus, tore apart from the town hall. It was lifted towards the giant gorilla’s mouth. Part of the spiral staircase came with it, dangling from the base like a spinal cord. The already established dent on one side in the shape of a shuttlecraft’s nose made the dome resemble some sort of battered ball-cock.
Amanda Duck sank her teeth into its rim, pulled her face, probed around the edge with her peat bog tongue and then presumably decided, ‘What the Hell?’ And she swallowed it whole with the same sort of difficulty that hand puppets have in swallowing. Bits of rubble flew out again in every direction.
There followed one of the mightiest belches that Greyminster had ever borne witness to. Almost every window in a radius of one and a half miles shattered.
“Right!” Jack Partridge removed his hands from his ears and stared at Hogan. “So this Old Empire’s ’eading off to pick up a bomb that’s large enough to crack the planet down the middle?”
“Yeah!” Hogan nodded. “That’s about the long and short of it mate. Of course, if you’re lucky, it might only remove a sizeable chunk.”
The image of an egg being beheaded by a teaspoon flitted through Jack’s mind.
“What if this chunk were, say, the Arizona Desert?” Jack grinned optimistically. “Would that, for example, stop the rest of the Earth being destroyed?”
Hogan simply smiled back.
“No...not really. You see, the geo-stationary orbit of the Earth would start to wobble.”
He illustrated this with an outstretched hand that promptly trembled a bit.
“Then the Earth would lose its orbit and corkscrew uncontrollably into the Sun.”
This was dramatically re-enacted by a finger tracing the imaginary path into Hogan’s other palm, concluding in an eruption of fingers. A thoughtful silence ensued.
“And there’s no way of stoppin’ this craft?” Jack was determined to cover all possibilities.
“Not as such...it’s sat on the outer rim of the Earth’s atmosphere at the moment, building up its power reserves to go into Hyperdrive.”
“So there’s not much point in callin’ the fire brigade?”
Hogan took the question as sarcasm and left it alone.
Jack’s mind ticked over the options left. He eventually ventured, “You couldn’t bring it down with a Tornado jet fighter or a Polaris missile or something?”
Two more shakes of the commander’s head and Jack felt his heart sink. Desperately he clutched at the few remaining straws.
“What about you? You’re a robot! Couldn’t you just jet-power your way up there with rocket boosters, climb aboard the craft and disable its ‘Dyper Hive’ or whatever it was?”
By this point Hogan had started to shake his head at every comment, studying the ground morbidly. Suddenly his eyes lit up with renewed enthusiasm.
“Yes! Yes...I am a robot! There is something we could do!”
Much to Jack’s astonishment he rolled back his sleeve to reveal a broad, bristly arm tightly bound by a monogrammed handkerchief. He immediately set about destroying the knot.
“If we’re going to surrender,” Jack muttered, watching the handkerchief unwind. “To be ’opes t’ God they’ve got bloody good eyesight!”
The hankie dropped to the ground in a parachute as Hogan dived into his pocket, withdrew a knife and started to probe into the mechanism inside his wrist. He glanced up sharply at the walkie-talkie in the sergeant’s grip.
“Does that thing transmit radio waves?”
Jack looked at it and frowned.
“Well, yes. But not very far...”
The knife blade emerged from the torn Neo-Flesh, a tiny computer chip speared to its point.
“Trust me!” Hogan broke out into a grin. “I’m an electronics genius!”
The brick hit the gorilla with a ‘Gloop’ and then vanished in rippling circles. Constable Parkins stood and stared, not one hundred percent certain whether he was hallucinating or not. Bricks didn’t normally get sucked into flesh like that. Come to think of it, towering monstrosities were seldom found roaming the streets of Greyminster either.
But Parkins was carrying out his orders dutifully, even though he’d heard nothing further from his boss. He reached down, picked up another loose brick, and bent back his arm.
There were plenty of loose bits scattered higgardly-piggardly about the pavements. Most of them were shards of red pot. He took another careful aim for the coconut shaped kneecap above him, one eye closed for precision and the tip of his tongue forcing its head through a gap between his lips. He let rip!
The projectile hurtled upwards. By some remarkable coincidence it hit the kneecap in exactly the spot that Parkins had been aiming for, and then bounced back. It grew in his vision, something almost lethargic and noncommittal about its approach.
Parkins covered his head with his arms and bolted.
The brick exploded on the pavement, peppering his back with a speckled red dust.
An experienced driver judges his car’s speed by the pitch of its engine. The slightest variation can bring its owner out in a p
rofound sweat. Colonel Vosh, who knew the Old Empire’s flagship better than he knew his own daughter, was currently undergoing a stressful few moments.
In the words of the common Earth driver, the Firestar’s engines were ‘Revving their knackers off.’
As the system geared up for the jump into Hyperdrive the Anti-G-force generator was producing a deafening roar. The craft began to shake so violently that the floor panels started to buckle and snap.
Vosh hammered at the pressure gauges with a clenched fist and a very red face. It was a futile gesture, he knew, but one that technicians the universe over always adopted as a last resort. On this occasion the last resort appeared not to be working.
He screamed at the top of his high pitched insect-like voice.
“What’s the matter with the damn thing? It won’t bloody go!”
The gallant repair-guard standing dutifully at his side swallowed and prodded hopelessly at a couple of buttons. The fact that the Firestar at its present rate of gear incrementation was due for explosion in approximately five minutes time was only the second most distressing factor on his mind. The first was that he’d never witnessed Vosh in such a temper before. It was the most terrible sight he’d ever beheld.
“You!” Vosh turned on Seven-Four-Two, his face crimson going on purple, the lugworm veins pulsing wildly in his temples.
Seven-Four-Two started to crumple but rallied back with commendable honour.
“Can’t you do something, you insignificant speck of flotsam?”
Make or break time. Service robots before him had been promoted with field commissions for acts of cunning heroism. Others, it must be said, had been dismantled on the spot for putting too much sugar in the colonel’s coffee. All he’d have to do was find the answer to the Firestar’s engine trouble and it’d be Corporal Seven-Four-Two from now on. Make or Break. Seven-Four-Two could hear the sounds of distant snapping.
He ventured a suggestion that became caught in his throat. He tried again, and what ought to have been, “It might be down to the catapult valve in the overhead jettison unit. I’ll get onto it right away,” came out as, “Have you taken the hand-brake off, your majesty?”